Humanitarian Cargo Transportation: Modeling Practice-Driven Network Topologies and Decentralized Planning Scenario

The effective delivery of relief commodities is critical during disasters. In the operations management community, various mathematical decision-making models have been developed for the purpose of providing specific analysis or policy guidelines for disaster response transportation planning. However, implementation of these models during actual humanitarian response events or translating recommendations to each specific disaster context can be challenging because the models are not tested on cases that represent key characteristics of disasters. Recommendations made by the academic community can be more valuable if they are tested across a range of disaster response transportation problems with characteristics observed in past disasters. The goal of this dissertation is to bridge some gaps that exist between humanitarian logistics transportation research and practice.;Firstly, topographical characteristics of disaster logistics transportation networks are defined by developing 21 new test cases based on historical disasters. Through the study of these test cases, seven measures are proposed that quantify relevant topographical network characteristics and their historical distribution is analyzed across these test cases. Based on this work, researchers can better evaluate new decision-making tools and policies for their applicability to many different types of disaster response transportation problems. Through the development and study of historical test cases, the range of applicability of humanitarian transportation models in practice may be enhanced.;Secondly, the performance of decentralized transportation planning is assessed on two representative historical test cases. Even though typical humanitarian logistics research assumes a single central planner, in reality multiple planners might be operating in different geographic regions, serving different needs of an affected population, or operating different modes of transportation. Decentralization scenarios that are observable in humanitarian practice are defined and their performance is compared to a central planner scenario using two disaster response transportation test cases. This comparison identifies 4 characteristics in a decentralized transportation problem that affect performance: uneven demand distribution, demand - vehicle capacity imbalance, lack of consolidating demand, and using inefficient routes. Mechanisms that planners could use to address these problems and improve performance in a decentralized planning environment are proposed.